The Charity Commission is making “tweaks and fixes” to its online filing system after some organisations reported technical or practical difficulties.
It introduced My Charity Commission Account (MCCA) last year as the default way for trustees to access the regulator’s services and file financial information.
Earlier this year, the regulator reported that technical issues experienced by some charities led to a “significantly higher volume of incoming queries” to its contact centre than in previous years, with a lower proportion answered.
On Friday, the regulator’s chief operating officer Nick Baker wrote that “whilst most charities were able to sign up to MCCA without problems, for some people the process has been frustrated by technical or practical difficulties”.
Writing in a blog, Baker apologised to trustees who had experience difficulties in speaking to the commission’s staff and said the regulator was implementing some changes to simplify its online filing system.
‘We have listened’
Baker wrote: “We have listened to feedback from those who already have accounts or have struggled to set them up and, to make things easier for trustees, we are making incremental changes to the MCCA system.
“We have already made some improvements, and we will be implementing further tweaks and fixes in the months ahead as we refine the system.
“And we’ll continue to use both your experience of using MCCA and our experience of rolling the system out to learn lessons and improve how we plan for future changes.”
Baker advised trustees to filed their charity’s annual returns ahead of their deadline.
“This is particularly helpful for charities due to file in October and January, which are our busiest months and when our contact centre is always busier than at other times of the year,” his blog reads.
“And it’s important that, if a charity contact moves on, they ensure that another person in the charity is set up to administer MCCA once they’ve left.
“There’s advice on this, and other aspects of managing an MCCA account, available on our website.”
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